With More Courage towards Becoming a Climate-Neutral Industrial Location

Felix Finkbeiner, founder of the Plant-for-the-Planet initiative, wants to plant a trillion trees to combat climate change together with children and young people around the world. We talked to him about his commitment and asked him what impact his cause has in (the construction) industry, among other matters.

The issue of sustainability is playing an increasingly important role in business, for example in medium-sized and large companies. To what extent do firms benefit from sustainability initiatives such as Plant-for-the-Planet?
Felix Finkbeiner: To stay at the top economically, you have to inspire the next generation. These are the clients and highly qualified employees of tomorrow. And that's exactly where we come in: we call on companies to act as first movers by positioning themselves as climate-neutral voluntarily. In addition to everything else that they already do in relation to sustainability. Because the bitter truth is that, without massive re-forestation, we are heading for a climate catastrophe. Whoever does something about it now, and does so voluntarily, is our hero.

Germany is to become the world's first climate-neutral industrial location. Climate-neutral and industrial location? Isn't that a contradiction? How can it be resolved?
That's not a contradiction at all. How do you become climate-neutral? Firstly, you reduce emissions, for example by converting your fleet to e-cars, purchasing electricity from renewable energy sources, avoiding emissions and applying energy efficiency measures wherever possible. All this fits very well with an industrial location! To all that, you add new trees to absorb the CO2 that you cannot save.

Who are the biggest objectors to sustainable change and who are driving it? How could the objectors be turned into economic beneficiaries of change?
Wherever short-term economic interests and climate protection do not fit together, nothing will happen. But what will change in the long run? We are already seeing this: wars are being waged because climate change deprives people of their livelihoods. A NASA study indicates that, in Syria, the civil war was preceded by years of drought that forced people to relocate to other areas. However, that's not all: whole areas are being flooded, or threatened by rainfall and hurricanes, while crop failures and water scarcity are undermining business fundamentals. And lastly, companies cannot be very interested in right-wing populist parties sealing off our economies in the face of more and more climate refugees.

The construction industry is one of the most resource-intensive sectors of the economy. What do you think should change within the construction industry in order for us to produce more sustainable development/building output?
There is a tremendous amount of potential in the construction industry for reducing emissions. It starts with the building materials: cement and steel production releases 10 percent of the world's man-made CO2, while wood absorbs CO2. So we have to use timber as much as possible for building. There is also enormous potential in the energy consumption of buildings, with marvelous opportunities for generating renewable energy.

At the present time, there is a great deal of human misery caused by humanitarian disasters such as droughts, flooding, civil wars and much more. The fundamental willingness to make the sustainability changes that are necessary to end this misery seems to be broadly present. The problem, however, is that far too little is being done. The German newspaper FAZ comments on this: ‘The set of facts relating to the anthropogenic causes of climate change is commonplace: available knowledge does not affect behavior.’ Do we have an implementation problem?
It is indeed the case that knowledge alone does not bring about any different behavior. We have a communication problem here: what we need is positive-emotional communication from a trustworthy source with a simple incentive to take action.

How can we succeed in taking the step from knowledge to action?
We children and young people have noticed that adults listen to us, because this is about our future. We don't have any hidden interests, we just want to survive! And it's quite easy for anyone to help us: by planting trees.

What do you expect from the leading industrial, automotive and logistics companies with regard to CO2 reduction?
That they show courage! That they address solutions now, with everything in their power. We're running out of time. The next decade is what counts. After that, it's too late.

You studied International Relations in London. What is your strategy for positioning Plant-for-the-Planet even better internationally?
To involve as many as possible of the splendid young adults from our 70,000 young Ambassadors for Climate Justice as co-workers in order to drive forward planting projects in the poor countries of the southern hemisphere; and to persuade companies in the rich nations that climate neutrality secures our future and theirs, too.

Plant-for-the-Planet and Felix Finkbeiner
Plant-for-the-Planet is a movement founded in 2007 by Felix Finkbeiner, who was nine years old at the time. It is now supported by many thousands of children and young people. Its goal is to plant one billion trees worldwide to combat climate change and at the same time raise awareness of global justice issues.

Felix Finkbeiner has received numerous awards for his dedication, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018. He has also started to study ecology at ETH Zurich this year.